Firstly- thank you all for making May Картошка 167‘s most successful month to date. We clocked up over 1100 visitors per month for the first time.So, what lies ahead in June?There’ll be enough football in the media to satisfy everybody, so unless something in FIFA 2010 really blows my mind I’ll leave football to the professionals.We’ll feature other sports though- pool, volleyball and golf…On the music front June will be Jazz Month at Картошка 167. I’m no expert on Jazz, but I’ve got a number of sides representing different schools of Jazz that I’d like to share with you.I’ll also be taking some time to look at the art of the Soviet Union, retro swimwear, Saul Bass and pulp fiction…Stay tuned and remember, comments are welcome, language no barrier.

As well as being a great beauty, Mrs Kartoshka is an educated woman. She has a University degree. She has lived in the most interesting of countries in the most interesting of times. She has travelled- Europe, Asia, South America, The Pacific, The Andes, The Himalayas, the shores of Kamchatka…

‘But’ she protests ‘I am not a writer…’

I needlessly reassure her about her intellect, about her perceptiveness, about her command of English, her knowledge of Soviet and Russian culture, but all to no avail.

Mrs Kartoshka says that the one part of a woman’s body on which a man should compliment her is her brain.

I trust that she knows that I am, indeed, a great admirer of that complex, intriguing organ as well as the lovely head in which it is housed.

The past is a foreign country: they do things differently thereThis is the opening line of The Go-Between ,a novel by L.P. Hartley (1895 – 1972), published in 1953.I’ve decided to drop the Bossa Nova reference from the title of the blog because it was becoming misleading. There will still be Bossa Nova posts on here, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to source music that is not widely available on other sites (Loronix for example). This is not to suggest that Joao Kartoshka’s love of Bossa Nova genre was insincere or fleeting, but rather that it was the tip of an iceberg in terms of his fascination for popular culture of the recent past.I would hesitate to call this a nostalgia site, as we must rememberthe development of new ideas and the quest for change is a positive force in life.